Real estate investment and fund manager ALT Capital Partners, through its REimagine Fund 1, has formed a strategic partnership with investment holding company New GX Capital-funded Airnergize Ventures, which focuses on early-stage and scalable disruptive utilities management businesses.

Its first investment is into Bolide, which is an integrated utilities brand designed to bridge the utilities service divide, thereby assisting businesses and body corporates to spend less for cleaner and sustainable funded utilities.

The integration is achieved by leveraging off a combination of technologies, engineering, and innovative funding capabilities to provide affordable and reliable utilities.

Bolide mainly focuses on small-, medium-sized and microenterprises, primarily in townships and secondary cities where communities have historically been underserved and load reduction still persists.

Bolide’s offering is designed to lower operational expenditure and deliver better utilities management as a single, integrated solution. By combining utilities with connectivity and AI-powered security, Bolide aims to provide its clients with access to smart, reliable and affordable decentralised funded smart grids.

The agreement will see Bolide invest about R150-million over a period of 24 to 36 months in utilities infrastructure and property technology across ALT Capital Partners' portfolio of shopping centres.

"Our proptech strategy started six years ago with our investment in Fungi Utilities and continued through Bolide Concierge. This enabled us to be a strategic partner to landlords, body corporates and businesses in a world where municipal services are becoming expensive and unreliable,” New GX Capital CEO Khudusela Pitje said on October 20.

The partnership is also a step forward in ALT Capital Partners’ mission to create efficient, sustainable, and technologically advanced services for its customers.

"We chose Bolide to be a strategic partner in our journey to automated utilities management, connectivity, AI security, combined with funded energy and water infrastructure, due to New GX’s 20 years’ experience in infrastructure funding.”

“Bolide has the added benefit of its strategic partnerships with Herotel Business and Vumacam, completing our integrated utilities strategy and providing . . . value to our tenants and customers,” ALT Capital Partners principal Ben Kodisang said.

Beyond commercial applications, Bolide has also engaged third-party partners to provide surrounding communities with access to funding for clean and sustainable utilities. It has also started engaging in youth skills development, which will be integrated into the smart decentralised utilities sector.